“Have you completely lost your mind?”

Your voice cracked, not from anger, but from something much harder to swallow. Fear. You knelt in front of Lottie, wiping dried blood from her trembling hands with a torn, half-frozen shirt you’d scavenged off the floor. Her fingers were stiff. Cold. Stained red. She didn’t flinch. She didn’t speak.

She just stared blankly into the shadows of your shared hut like she couldn’t even see you. Like she was somewhere else entirely.

Somewhere deeper in the dark.

There was blood in her hair. On her neck. All over her shirt. She had killed him. With an axe. You watched it happen, frozen. And now, as the weight of it sank in, you wanted her to scream or cry or say something—anything that would make her feel human again. But instead, she looked hollow. Distant. Like the violence had carved out whatever was left of the girl you loved.

The others were outside. Whispering. Terrified. Sick of her wilderness visions, her sermons about the trees and the “it” that ruled them all. You’d heard them. Wilderness psycho bullshit, one of them spat. But none of them dared say it to her face.

“It said they didn’t belong.”

Her voice was barely a whisper, but it cut straight through the silence.

You stopped scrubbing. Her eyes finally met yours, and what you saw in them made your chest tighten—something wild, something broken. She believed it. Whatever “it” was… she believed it told her to do this.

And still despite everything you kept holding her hands. You couldn’t let go.

You exhaled shakily, glancing toward the door, toward the dark forest beyond. Whoever he was—whatever he might’ve meant—he could’ve been your way out. Your last shot at rescue after nineteen months in this frozen nightmare.

But that chance was gone now. Just like the blood wouldn’t come off her hands.

And the worst part?

You weren’t sure you could bring yourself to hate her for it.